[T3] T3s in Japan

[Steven Ayres <comwest@well.com>]

My wife just got back from her annual pilgrimage to Japan, and brought 
me back a copy of a slick Japanese magazine called Street VWs. I thought 
the list might be interested in the high T3 content. Of six featured 
cars, for instance, half are bugs, two are Buses and one is an early 
Square. 

Japanese old-car dealers tend to follow pretty much the same formula for 
advertising: pictures of cars annotated with year, model and price. 
There are many of this sort of ad in the magazine, and I was 
particularly struck by the number of T3s relative to other types. While 
not a majority by any means, both early and late T3s show up in the 
inventories of almost every advertiser, often two or three of them. A 
thumbnail survey shows about 1 T3 for every 5 of other types. I'm 
familiar with car prices in Japan, so I was less surprised to see 
average prices around the yen equivalent of $16,000. Little surprise 
that we sometimes spot Japanese dealers at the swap meets carrying 
briefcases full of cash. I don't expect that they're actually getting 
those prices all the time, but the differential is just too enormous to 
ignore.

It makes me wonder, though, why the VW mags here seem so reluctant to 
cover our cars. It couldn't have anything to do with the relative sizes 
of the markets for cheap knock-off parts, of course.

Steven Ayres, Prescott AZ
'66 343 

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